Home Theater System

Home cinema, also called home theater, seeks to reproduce cinema quality video and audio in the home. The video aspect usually involves a large-screen and/or high definition television or a projection system with movie screen to project the image on. Quality audio reproduction is usually achieved with a high fidelity surround sound system.

A home theater system is a combination of electronic components designed to recreate the experience of watching a movie in a theater. When you watch a movie on a home theater system, you are more immersed in the experience than when you watch one on an ordinary television. To see how home theaters do this, let's first look at the original model -- the movie theater. People have had VCRs in their homes for years, and in the United States, there are video rental stores everywhere. So why do we keep spending so much money going to the movie theater if we can watch the movie in our own home for so much cheaper? We go because the theater offers us an amazing experience we just don't get at home. There are a few main components that make watching TV and going to the movies very different.

One of the biggest differences is the sound experience. When you go to see a movie in a quality movie theater, you'll hear the music, sound effects and dialogue not just from the screen, but all around you, A standard movie theater has three speakers behind the screen -- one to the right, one to the left and one in the center -- and several other speakers spread out in the rest of the theater.

In this surround sound system, you hear different parts of the soundtrack coming from different places. When somebody on the left side of the screen says something, you hear it more from the left speaker. And in a movie like "Star Wars", you hear a rumbling swoosh travel from the front of the theater to the rear as a spaceship flies toward the camera and off the screen. You are more involved in the experience of watching a film because the world of the movie is all around you.

The second chief component of the theater experience is the large size of the movie screen. In a theater, the screen takes up most of your field of view, which makes it very easy to lose yourself in the movie. After all, you're sitting in the dark with only one thing to look at, and everything you're looking at seems much bigger than life.

We also enjoy going to the movies because we can see everything so well. Film projectors present very large, clear pictures. The detail is much sharper than what we see on an ordinary 19-inch television, and the movement is much more fluid. We may not consciously recognize this, but it does make a significant difference in how we enjoy a movie. When we can see more detail, we are more engrossed in the world of the movie.

The basic idea of a home theater is to recreate these elements with home equipment.

In the 1950s, home movies became popular in the United States and elsewhere as Kodak 8 mm film (Pathé 9.5 mm in France) and camera and projector equipment became affordable. Projected with a small, portable movie projector onto a portable screen, often without sound, this system became the first practical home theater. They were generally used to show home movies of family travels and celebrations but also doubled as a means of showing private stag films. Dedicated home cinemas were called screening rooms at the time and were outfitted with 16 mm or even 35 mm projectors for showing commercial films. These were found almost exclusively in the homes of the very wealthy, especially those in the movie industry.

Portable home cinemas improved over time with color film, Kodak Super 8 mm film film cartridges, and monaural sound but remained awkward and somewhat expensive. The rise of home video in the early 1970s almost completely killed the consumer market for 8 mm film cameras and projectors, as VCRs connected to ordinary televisions provided a simpler and more flexible substitute.

The development of multi-channel audio systems and laserdisc in the 1980s created a new paradigm for home cinema. The first public demonstration of this integration occurred in 1982 at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago, Illinois. Peter Tribeman of NAD (USA) organized and presented a demonstration made possible by the collaborative effort of several companies who contributed their technologies to demonstrate what a home cinema would "look and sound" like.

Over the course of three days, retailers, manufacturers, and members of the consumer electronics press were exposed to the first "home like" experience of combining a high quality video source with multi-channel sound. That one demonstration is credited with being the impetus for developing what is now a multi-billion dollar business.

In the late 1990s, the development of DVD, 5-channel audio, and high-quality video projectors that provide a cinema experience at a price that rivals a big-screen HDTVs sparked a new wave of home cinema interest.

Home Theater Systems can be purchased at all the major consumer electronics retailers and at smaller retail outlets dedicated to HomeTheater Systems.

Technically, a home cinema could be as basic as a simple arrangement of a television, VCR, and a set of speakers. It is therefore difficult to specify exactly what distinguishes a "home cinema" from a "television and stereo". Most people in the consumer electonics industry would agree that a "home theater" is really the integration of a relatively high-quality video source with multi-channel electronics and speakers. Even if households have the system set up for home cinema it is common only to use the speakers integrated within the television rather than to play the sound through the surround sound system. This is because surround sound loses its impact with material which is not recorded in a way suitable for surround sound. Films, drama and sport tend to be optimized for surround sound whereas news and daytime TV provide no particular advantage.

High-quality home cinemas are assembled from component pieces purchased separately to provide the best combination of equipment for the cost. It is possible to purchase home theater in a box kits that include a set of speakers for surround sound, an amplifier/tuner for adjusting volume and selecting video sources, and sometimes a DVD player. Though these kits pale in comparison to a custom-built home cinema, they are inexpensive and easy to set up; one needs only to add a television and some movies in order to create a simple home theater. Because the difficulty of running long cables through walls for surround sound inhibits some consumers, some home cinemas includes wireless rear loudspeakers, with in-built amplifiers.

Today, "home cinema" implies a real "cinema experience" and therefore a higher quality set of components than the average television provides. A typical home theater would include the following:

A large, high-quality, display - generally a big-screen television ( Liquid crystal display television, plasma TV, traditional CRT TV, or a rear-projection TV) or possibly a video projector, often HDTV-capable.

One or more audio/video sources. High quality formats such as DVD or laserdisc are preferred, though old home cinema setups use a stereo VHS VCR. Cable, KU or C band are also common, as are hard disk based systems.

An audio system that is capable of surround sound. This usually consists of at least 4 (though more are common) full range speakers and a subwoofer for low-frequency effects. Sometimes a specialized decoder is used to allow the playback of newer surround-sound formats.

Comfortable seating and organization to improve the cinema feel. This might include several comfortable recliners and curtains or subdued room lighting (required for video projectors) to enhance the experience.

Some home cinema enthusiasts go so far as to build a dedicated room in the home for the theater. Such a room is often decorated to resemble an actual cinema, with specialized furniture, movie posters, or a popcorn or snack machine. These more advanced installations often include sophisticated acoustic design elements, including "room-in-a-room" construction that isolates sound and provides the potential for a nearly ideal listening environment. These installations are often designated as "screening rooms" to differentiate from simpler installations. A few home cinema setups even have features that are not commonly found in commercial cinemas, such as tactile sound.

The most recent addition to the world of televisions is plasma flat-screen technology. These televisions don't have CRTs or projector devices, so they have extremely thin designs. The typical plasma screen is less than 6 inches deep. These televisions are also very light, so it's fairly easy to mount one on your wall. If you plan to set up a home theater in a smaller room, this is a definite plus -- you don't have to worry about hauling a giant direct-view or rear-projection model in, and you don't need to figure out where to position a projector.

Plasma televisions create pictures with an array of cells that receive a constant flow of low-pressure neon and xenon gas. The cells are arranged in a matrix between sheets of thin glass and are covered with electrodes. When an electrode applies a charge to a particular cell, the voltage ignites the gas, changing it to plasma, which emits ultraviolet (UV) light. The UV light activates colored phosphors on another layer, and the phosphors emit visible colored light (this is the same basic process that occurs in a fluorescent lamp).

Each cell is dedicated to a particular color -- red, green or blue. Each pixel, the individual dots that make up a television image, has three different cells, one for each color.

Plasma displays offer great picture quality, but not always the best. They may take the lead as the preferred future technology, but at this point their performance advantages may not justify the price, which is upwards of $3,000. The real benefit of a flat plasma screen is its compact size, and if you have a small theater space, this may be reason enough to shell out the extra money.


Twenty five years ago, only a small percentage of households in the United States had cable television, and VCRs were a brand-new luxury item. Sound systems, for the most part, were limited to the small speaker built into the television, and not many people had a screen larger than 27 inches. There was certainly no mistaking the typical TV room for a home theater -- home theaters were expensive setups with actual film projectors and wide screens.

Over the years, the world of home entertainment has changed radically. These days, most U.S. households get at least 50 channels and have a good-sized color television and a VCR. More and more people are adding additional advanced components to their entertainment setup to create home theater systems. The world of home entertainment is changing rapidly, and consumers have a wide range of options.

In this article, we'll look at home theater systems to find out what they are, what they can do, and what components you need to set one up. If you're thinking of turning your den into a fully functioning home theater, this article will help you get started.


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